{"id":5660,"date":"2016-09-02T12:45:47","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T16:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=5660"},"modified":"2016-09-02T12:45:47","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T16:45:47","slug":"galleries-of-the-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=5660","title":{"rendered":"Galleries of the Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Aztec

Aztec double-headed serpent, British Museum<\/p><\/div>\n

As I said in my last post<\/a>, there’s something captivating about the Buddhist artworks in the Mogao caves in northwestern China and, strangely enough, I find it to be reminiscent of things I’ve seen in fractal programs.\u00a0 I’ve come up with a term for this electrifying visual genre: “Divine Diagrams.”\u00a0 “Divine” because they’re mostly, but not exclusively, religious artworks, and “Diagrams” because they have a highly ordered composition to them that makes them function like elaborate and very ornate diagrams; one almost feels like they should “read” them.\u00a0 Furthermore, the term is generic because I’ve found that the kind of images in the Mogao caves are universal, occurring in almost every religion and culture and not exclusively Buddhist or Chinese.\u00a0 Although the actual subject matter and purpose of Divine Diagrams differs depending on the religion or culture they’re from, the basic visual characteristics are the same and form a single, universal style spanning the entire world and even extending into the realm of fractals.<\/p>\n

Geometry unites and defines the Divine Diagram genre and gives them also what I think is their artistic appeal.\u00a0 Otherwise imagery made in such a mechanical medium as a fractal program would be irrelevant and completely unrelated.\u00a0 But the reason fractal programs are able to produce similar types of imagery is because the medium fractal artists work with, the computer rendering of complex geometry, produces imagery with the same highly ordered visual characteristics.\u00a0 Different mediums but pursuing the same goal of geometric composition.\u00a0 In fact, it’s the hand-made artists of the non-computerized media who are attempting to imitate and follow geometric rules while fractal programs are merely doing what is natural to them and for this reason actually have an edge over their manual colleagues.<\/p>\n

Geometry is the primary “visual ingredient” that flavours them all –hand-made or computerized.\u00a0 Geometry is the connection and since geometry is also the source of their artistic appeal, as I personally suggested, fractal programs are not a second-rate source of these Divine Diagrams but simply a fresh variation on this very old artistic theme.<\/p>\n

Fractal programs differ in only one substantial way and that’s with respect to the hand-made or hand-painted elements.\u00a0 But although the faces, hands, trees and other realistic imagery found in the hand-made artworks do not exist in the fractal medium, fractal programs more than make up for this abstract-only limitation with their exhaustive output of complex and intense imagery.\u00a0 As a result, fractals and other computerized algorithms ought to have a lot of potential for making “Divine Diagrams” if their own specialized abstract medium consisting of color, shape and pattern can fill the obvious aesthetic gaps left by a lack of hand-made artistic content.\u00a0 Is fractal imagery too plain for such things?<\/p>\n

Divine Diagrams<\/strong><\/p>\n

What characterizes this genre of imagery is what it attempts to depict or express:<\/p>\n